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The gameplay itself is pretty conventional as far as metroidvania RPGs go. You equip a set of moves (which you purchase, earn, or find as you go through the game) that deal damage, status effects, etc. Thus armed, you travel through a landscape full of enemies, killing them for items, money, and experience. Sadly, there's a lot of grinding in this game - far, far too many "quests" that boil down to "kill an arbitary number of a particular kind of monster" or "gather so many items". It's an irritating slog if you're like me and feel compelled to do everything that gets noted in your journal.

This is mostly made up for by the fact that the game is so freaking weird. I can't even explain its plot or aesthetics except in terms of itself. I.E., This is the game where you play a noodly mute hippie and run through a WWI battlefield, shooting rubber ducks at goblins. This so you can join Caesar, Ghengis Khan, Napoleon, and Cleopatra in an epic team up against a real-time-strategy game enthusiast leading an army of said goblins. This is actually a diversion from what you were *supposed* to be doing, which was getting back a classmate's cell phone from the vice-principal. And the vice principal is a killer kung-fu robot. And no matter where you are or what you're doing, the background music is chanting your name.

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An open beta for the Switch version of Dragon Ball FighterZ gave me a chance to finally get a go on that game. I had a blast, and no small amount of success; there are principles in fighting games that I'm drawn by, but the idea of long, complex move lists puts me off, so I appreciated something with a simpler control scheme. I'll probably end up getting the full version.

The only hiccup was the fact that I misunderstood the time that it would be ending, meaning that I did not get enough time to make a full recording of my saved replays. There were some really fun matches that I wanted to capture in there as well, particularly with my team of Krillin, Piccolo and teen Gohan.

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I've been playing Starcrawlers for a bit now, and I have mixed feelings about it.

It combines short, procedurally generated dungeons with Legend-of-Grimrock-esque first-person exploration and turn-based RPG combat. I like the random dungeons and the exploration, but the combat doesn't quite feel satisfying. I think this is because most battles have a very low risk of killing your party outright - instead, the challenge comes from managing your resources, because health is hard to regain and long crawls can wear down your party with debilitating status ailments. That's not a model of combat I find very engaging, frankly - I'd rather have battles where every contest carries a real risk of death, but you get fully restored out-of-combat so that you can throw all of your resources into every fight.

As an example, I remember one battle I got into with a pair of enemies who could only scratch me, but had very high health. After we spent a few rounds chipping away at each other, I did some long division with our respective health and damage values and was able to determine with mathematical certainty that I would win in XX turns. Knowing that made the fight much less engaging.

On the frontier of the Wild South, there's only one woman with the grit to take on its most dangerous outlaws and bring them Back Alive, or Maybe Dead.

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Debating on getting a Nintendo DS XL. I'm a 40-ish father of a young child that is finding it increasingly difficult to turn on the Xbox or PS4 after a long day of working and caring for my wonderful little monster.

I've heard a few people in similar situations recommend a DS as it's something that can be taken to bed with you(in which I usually take my phone or Ipad).

I think I like the idea, but I'm unsure if I want to drop the 130 bucks.

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I'd save the money for a Switch at this point Larry. I like the idea of a portable/console hybrid and all my friends love theirs.

I have both. I'd say it depends on how much portability you want. The switch is about as portable as a tablet or small laptop. The 3DS can literally be put in your pocket to go. Both are fantastic and tons of fun (I just started Breath of the Wild for a second time). One thing though, you need to get a screen protector for the Switch so it doesn't get scratched up.

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So that pre-alpha gameplay demo for Cyberpunk 2077 is now out and around for everyone to view.

So from me:

-Default femV's cute.

-So despite being pre-alpha, the art direction? A++. It really does look and feel like "gritty future as imagined by the 80s".

-UI's...ehhh. The red text makes things a bit hard to see. And I feel like the letters are just a bit too small and too close together that makes things even more illegible. Although even if the default isn't changed, hopefully it's customizable as hell.

-For the purposes of the demo I suspect the difficulty has been turned down. Otherwise the whole time I was just thinking: "So this slight woman just took down an entire gang of organ traffickers...armed with nothing but some drugs and a machine pistol".

-Bullet-time's always cool though.

-Also so far, I like Jackie as your companion.

-Conversation system on display...could be a mixed bag to some. It's definitely post-dialogue wheel instead of pre-dialogue wheel.

In this demo, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of dialogue options present. Think I saw a maximum of 4 options.

The infamous issue of what the dialogue option says and what comes out of the character's being completely different is present here.

Also I now know what CDPR meant when they said V wasn't a blank slate for the player to inhabit. S/he has auto-dialogue, that the player has no choice in choosing. Which means reinforcing a certain personality type.

-I actually breathed a sigh of relief at seeing all the NPCs with the generic moniker names. As much as CDPR is trying to reach for the stars, and make the biggest game ever...I do not want the devs to kill themselves trying to write, record, and program full dialogue tree options for. Every. Single. Person. In Night City.

-I'm just going to say: unless if you're specifically going on a Challenge run of "minimal/no augmentations", there is literally no reason not to take an optical scanner or subdermal grip.

-Hard to judge the vehicle gameplay without actually playing it myself but it...looks GTA-ish.

-Hullo there now-universal-loot-rarity-color-coding system.

-Hacking system...I'm not sure how to feel. Seemed to hack that ganger a little too easily. And I'm...not fond of the rubix cube of the design. Once again, while it looks cool, a bit difficult to read. I do wonder if the brief glimpse we saw was just that: a glimpse. They did also mention that the character build for this V wasn't based around hacking, so maybe not.

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So, I’m very excited for Destiny 2 Forsaken. But, all of my old clan has either switched to PC or stopped playing. I’m not terribly bothered by this, as the clan was one actual friend of mine who invited me and his friends and coworkers, whom I really didn’t like, but put up with so I’d have a consistent raid group. So, I’m kinda glad they’re gone, but now I’m left pretty much solo.

What I’m getting at is, I know there are folks here who play Destiny. I’ve played with haren and atamajakki before, and those were easily my most enjoyable experiences I’ve ever had playing Destiny (being able to be out with my fireteam makes a BIG difference). I don’t know if you folks are still playing, or part of clans already. But I would love to start or join a queer-friendly Clan with you folks, if you are interested.

Going by Willow now, or Wil for short. She/Her/Hers.

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So, I’m very excited for Destiny 2 Forsaken. But, all of my old clan has either switched to PC or stopped playing. I’m not terribly bothered by this, as the clan was one actual friend of mine who invited me and his friends and coworkers, whom I really didn’t like, but put up with so I’d have a consistent raid group. So, I’m kinda glad they’re gone, but now I’m left pretty much solo.

What I’m getting at is, I know there are folks here who play Destiny. I’ve played with haren and atamajakki before, and those were easily my most enjoyable experiences I’ve ever had playing Destiny (being able to be out with my fireteam makes a BIG difference). I don’t know if you folks are still playing, or part of clans already. But I would love to start or join a queer-friendly Clan with you folks, if you are interested.

Sure, I've got one already, but it's just me and andrix who we did the Nightfall together for the Rat King. We've actually been wanting to play with you, but didn't know if you wanted to play or not. But yeah, we're probably going to play Wednesday, since andrix works away from home start of the week, then comes home on Wednesday. And I promised we'd do Forsaken together. I just got my Sagira shell yesterday! Had to work hard to get it before the Solstice ended (though it didn't matter, since I couldn't max out the points and that's all I needed). But yeah, we're around! And will have Forsaken. andrix saw that Ikora is sad, so... we're going to do some vengence-murder for her.

​When noise turns to silence, when colors dull and pale, when reality no longer makes sense, there shall you find me. There, in the dreams of the River of Faceless Millions, do I dwell.